Smarten up, gals! Drop your IQ if you want to score with the male ego.

By Samantha Bonar, Times Staff Writer

NEW York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is in town next week to discuss her new book, "Are Men Necessary?," and, ostensibly, to expound on the obvious punch lines the title seems to set up.

Her tome is based on anecdotal experience and cites a couple of studies that arrived at the revelation that men prefer subservient, less-intelligent women as romantic partners. The notion is: Given their druthers, successful men would rather have relationships with secretaries, waitresses and maids.

I wonder how much grant money those academics got. Let us hypothesize that subservient and not-too-bright women are easier to control than someone who knows enough (and has the financial independence) not to put up with a man's garbage.

And why does a man need to control a woman? So that she will not reject and abandon and thus humiliate him. Interestingly enough, the researchers also say that men believe that smart women are more likely to cheat on them. Call it the smart-sneaky connection. There could be something to this, as smart-sneaky men have been cheating on women for eons.

(A confession: I do understand why men fall in love with their maids. I absolutely adore mine — after all, she scrubs my kitchen floor, which seems the height of kindness and generosity. Sometimes she makes me egg rolls too — what could be more lovable?)

Researchers have apparently found that men prefer long-term relationships with subordinates rather than co-workers or supervisors. Women, however, showed no significant preference for socially dominant men, or for socially inferior men. They appear to hanker for their peers — while, sadly, their peers are at Applebee's hitting on the women who bring them their burgers and pies.

I always assumed that alpha men wanted alpha women, that kings wanted queens. Not so. I guess that holds true only for wolves.

In addition, British researchers have recently "discovered" that the higher a woman's IQ, the fewer prospects she has for marriage. (Jane Austen could have told them that.) To be a droll, dry, wry, sarcastic or clever woman is deadly, apparently. (Yes, you may point out the example of Mr. Darcy, who loved Elizabeth Bennet's witty repartee, but I still say he's secretly gay.)

In other words, you can be tall, blond, thin and a former runway model, but that all counts for naught if you are smart and successful and, thus, annoying. I guess everything my mother told me about the male ego is true. This, apparently, is why American men travel to Shanghai, Kiev and Bangkok in search of dates.

I guess the new book, “Are Men Necessary” really hit a chord with reviewers at “the Times” since this is at least the second review of the book in just nine days.

This second review of the book is as lacking in skepticism as the first review: it accepts every idea the book proposes without questioning its validity.

Of the sexist lies that this book seeks to promote are that, men have “garbage” that must be put up with while women have no negative social characteristics (none that are worth noting or that must might have to put up with, anyway). Women are thus perfect and men are decidedly imperfect and needing repair (or face extinction the title seems to suggest).

Describing this hateful book as a tome is inappropriate. The book is, rather, a thinly veiled attack on men. The title is decidedly hateful (Is the issue of men’s necessity in society even discussed or is the title designed to promote the idea that men are decidedly inferior to women?).

What is the book based on? Anecdotal experience and a couple of studies that arrived at “the revelation that men prefer subservient, less intelligent women as romantic partners.”
I wouldn’t mind seeing the data that this book relies on as I am fairly certain it doesn’t say what the reviewers say about men.

The researchers also say men believe smart women are more likely to cheat on them. The reviewer does not bother to refute this claim of female infidelity by smart women, but rather tries to assert women’s right to cheat based upon the idea that, “Smart-sneaky men have been cheating on women for eons”. Thus, the argument of the reviewer seems to be that two wrongs make a right. Thus, if men have cheated for eons, it must be ok for women to do so for at least as long (if not longer).

The reviewer (like the author) makes many sexist assumptions about men and women that have yet to be proven.

“and why does a man need to control a woman?”

The assumption is that men try to control, women do not.

That has yet to be proven.

What is wrong with wanting to choose a partner who will not abandon and reject you in your time of need? Isn’t the whole point of having a partner so that we have someone on our team when the going gets tough?

Here is the main message that men and women are supposed to get coming away from this book:

Men, the problem is with you and you have to change if you want things to get better.

Yes, this is a joke. A fairly stupid and over-used one, but nothing terribly new or exciting.

If the opposite book was written, I think you'd see a few feminists getting bent out of shape about it, but the vast majority of people (male and female) just dismissing it as a dumb book by a jerk. Do you really think this book is going to be received so much differently?

In addition, British researchers have recently "discovered" that the higher a woman's IQ, the fewer prospects she has for marriage. (Jane Austen could have told them that.) To be a droll, dry, wry, sarcastic or clever woman is deadly, apparently.

Yeah because I love having to explain something 15 times to someone before they understand it. I think that most men would want someone at their own intelligence level. She just seems like an angry beeyatch whose attitude has kept her from getting a man.

I wonder how the reaction would be to this book if the title were:
"How to understand and appreciate the generic, stereotypical, and misinterpreted differences between Men and Women as seen through the money-hungry exploitive eyes of a pop-psychologist's quackery."

..... Instead of the Post-Feminist-Line-Grabbing-Emotion-Manipulating title they went for to obviously sell more books.

The story has been told before folks, this is just the same tired old message in yet another different package.

Yeah yeah..yeah...I get it. (Yawn)

They rule, we ******.

They are the architects of sanity and civility, while we just eat beer-flavored bananas, lay around in our own filth, and scream and howl like monkeys on smack.

It doesn't surprise me that Maureen Dowd wrote such a book. I've been watching her for years as a guest commentator on the various Sunday morning talk shows, where they solicit views from a grab bag of "influential journalists" of various political persuasions. Maureen Dowd seems to be typecasted (quite appropriately) as the angry liberal feminist with the anti-male chip on her shoulder. In the several years I've watched her comment on TV and read her articles, I haven't once agreed substatively with anything she said that was based on opinion.

Quite frankly Maureen reminds me of a certain subculture of the lesbian community at UVa. A lesbian friend of mine used to talk about a handful of lesbians who would chastise her for talking with men (such as myself). And it drove them absolutely bullschit when I would hug one of their lesbians friends. A self respecting lesbian could be shunned for that kind of behavior, you know... Quite frankly these are people badly in need of couseling.

But then there are quite a few people out there who fit in that category...

I'm sure Maureen has her loyal readers who would eat up a book like this - even if it is tongue-in-cheek. What-ever... Let them have their little pity party. It makes them feel superior, you know.

The thing I want to know is this. Where were these allegedly superior IQ women when I was on the dating scene? I spent half a lifetime looking for a mate who was an equal in any way to my six highly achieving sisters and my mom who was valedictorian of her high school. Intimidated? Sorry... More like avoiding the beatch factor like the plague. Can you blame a halfway intelligent man for shunning a mate lacking in the most basic social skills? IQ alone does not a man/woman make. Sorry, missy...

Let's put it this way. I'll put half my sisters, my mom, and any number of a few women I dated up against Miss Dowd any day of the year. Measure on any factor you consider worthy of "achievement." She couldn't hold a candle to any of them on a windless day.

Eat your heart out, Maureen, not that you really cared in the first place.

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